Each Monday, I publish something called the Breaking Bad Power Rankings. It’s pretty self-explanatory: I rank the show’s characters, from Walt to Skyler to This Guy, by how badass they are. Today, I’m tweaking the formula for an entirely different story, one involving a blowjob at an Eminem concert. Here is: the Humanity Power Rankings.

In last place…oh. THERE’S A TIE. Let’s meet everyone, shall we?

Guy and Girl

This is one of two pictures of Guy and Girl (names intentionally removed) circulating on the Internet. I can’t show the bottom of it, but it’s still the more SFW photo of the two. (You can find them here.) They attended an Eminem concert at Slane Castle in Ireland over the weekend, and while there, they engaged in “public fun.” Or as the Irish would say, she leafed his clover. In front of everyone. At an Eminem concert. That’s important to repeat.

Anyway, Girl’s only 17, the age of legal consent in Ireland, but not in the United States, where the photo has gone massively viral. Looking for a good (read: actually terrible) time? Then search the hashtag “#slanegirl” on Twitter. She’s being called a no-good slut, while he’s “THE MAN,” which brings us to our next contestant.

Whoever Made This

And This

And Pretty Much Everyone Else Involved

A typical tweet about the incident goes like, “Slane Girl getting sympathy in the papers…What for being a slut?” while “defenders,” so to speak, are replying with, “Nice bit of massive slut-shaming, Twitter. Those using #slanegirl hashtag to bully a young woman should be f*cking embarrassed.” Oh yeah, and now she’s in the hospital.

The pictures went viral after being posted on social networking sites, causing them to even trend around the world on Twitter. But it has since emerged that the girl is understood to be just 17 and, according to reports, she has been so distressed by the online images that she has had to be sedated in hospital. Her family are also said to be distraught. (Via)

So. What did we learn here? Well: be you guy, girl, or whatever, DON’T DO THIS KIND OF SH*T IN PUBLIC. Guy isn’t a legend and Girl isn’t slut, but I do think they have something in common: they’re both idiots.

So the only way a 17 year old girl could fuck up and do something stupid is if she has daddy issues? It could just be that she’s young and got caught up in the moment? Ever bother wondering if the Guy’s dad is in the picture?

@dissident – Really? The first comment out of the gates is “I’m guessing her dad isn’t in the picture”, not “Wow, their parents raised them poorly”, not “How embarrassing for these two”, not “I hope these kids learned a hard lesson about invasions of privacy”, but “I’m guessing HER dad isn’t in the picture” and I’m the one making it about sexism? This shit started sexist, but I’m the asshole for pointing it out?

Jeez. This article’s thesis is, “Look how shitty and sexist the internet is being about these pictures,” and you guys immediately leap right onto the shitty sexist train. “Hey Josh, I’m an asshole too!” Come on.

The only sexism involved here is people putting her down while praising the guy.

I agree whole heartedly that’s dumb.

But the whole “why do guys get to be a slut but women can’t!” thing has been around literally as long as I can remember so for at least 20+ years. I’m just bored with it. Anyone with common sense knows that’s an unfair double standard, and everyone else is too dumb to pay any attention to.

As for Roman’s comment, I think it was clearly at least half a joke. It certainly wasn’t anything to get uppity over.

Dissident, you’re making this too easy. People have been pointing out that there’s a sexist double standard for 20 years, based on this article it clearly hasn’t gone away, so the best course of action is to never talk about or point out again that sexist double standard. Sounds awesome. Also, no one gives a fuck what you’re bored with.

Complaining about sexism on the internet is only about one second older than complaining about complaining about sexism on the internet. And if you agree that’s dumb, Dissident, then why are you arguing? That’s all I’m talkin’ about.

Listen, I’ve been called a lot of really bad things in my life, but “humorless” was never one of them. You come up with something funny to say, and I’ll be happy to laugh at it. In the meantime, fighting with dickless, 20 year old douchebags is always fun for me, too.

Dude, I know that what’s his face in the stupid, floppy hats and bad eyeliner told you you could pick up chicks by insulting them, but I promise I have no interest in proving how fun I am to you. You’ve yet to post a comment that isnt about how you are bored/ are annoyed/ have daddy issues. Say something of substance, or get the fuck out. The grown ups are talking.

Technically, 17 is above the age of consent in most states, which is generally 16. There can be certain close-in-age exceptions, but it’s still usually 16. Only reason we think it’s 18 is because federal law says you can’t make porn of anyone under 18.

There are plenty of US states where the age of consent is 18. For example: Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, North Dakota, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Nine more states have 17 as the age of consent.

Age of consent can be trickier than some people think. Here in CT, age of consent is technically 16, BUT only within a 2 year age difference until the age of 18. Meaning you can have sex with someone that is 16 as long as you are under 18 and 17 if you are under 19.

Yeah i’m not really sure what the deal here is, if she was 18 people would focus on the slut shaming…but honestly, in this digital age where even on google street view you can be busted for anything, perhaps blowing a guy at a major festival is not a good idea no matter the age.

Yes, in the United States, and the fact that this article neglects that, makes me pretty sick
“Section 2256 of Title 18, United States Code, defines child pornography as any visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct involving a minor (someone under 18 years of age).”
via: [www.justice.gov]

So I guess Josh has not seen the story about pornstar Rachel Starr giving head to her on-again off-again boyfriend, (and Eminem wannabe) Machine Gun Kelly during a concert in Dallas.

I for one will not slut shame because if a woman wants to use her body in a way that may lower peoples opinions of her, that is her business. Also because I look at porn from these women and really enjoy it.

It’s a horrible story and I feel terrible for her. But hey, stupidity has to have consequences. I bet lots and lots of teenage girls are going to think twice from now on before acting so stupid in a public place..

But I’m curious, to the people who write these articles on places like jezebel, salon, here, etc: at what point can a woman be deemed a slut? or is your point that the term “slut” should stopped being used at all?

Because, from my perspective, anyone – man or woman – who’s engaging in 3rd base or higher sex acts in public is definitely a “slut”. I’m not saying you should shame them for it, but come on.

It’s just one of those very weighty words that invoke a whole cultural history. It carries a legacy of some pretty terrible misogyny; like, the kind that results in women being stoned to death and such.

Here’s a good rule of thumb: don’t do stuff in public, or on video, that you don’t want to be called out for later. A woman having sex in public possibly isn’t a slut, but I’d say she isn’t too bright. Perhaps we should just call her a dumbass. Him, too.

I read both jezebel and uproxx every day, and it’s not often that both sites treat the same news story the same way, but in this case it seems all can agree – it’s shitty to take or publicize pictures of someone engaging in a sexual act without their consent, no matter how old the person is. Also, if you want to avoid having photos taken of your sex acts, it is inadvisable to perform them in public. Done deal. Can we stop feeding the monster now?

This is the only article on this story that I have read that neglected to mention that proliferation of this images is, in the united states at least, Child Pornography. Of course, it is the author’s prerogative if they want to brag about showing a more sfw version than buzzfeed, and neglect the child porn aspect, but uproxx is definitely losing a reader here.

Some people have been complaining about how slanegirl is getting shamed while the guys she serviced publicly are getting praised. Let me take a shot at it ;) It is actually not a double standard, because both scenarios are vastly different in terms of circumstances and consequences. I can think of at least four crucial differences:

First, sleeping around is easier for women. Regardless of how you feel about promiscuity, we can all agree that a guy who manages to rack up a lot of sexual partners has to have some skills. It’s challenging for men to rack up partners, even for men with low standards. A man needs social intelligence, interpersonal skills, persistence, thick skin, and plain old dumb luck. For women, though, a vagina and a pulse is often enough. Whenever an accomplishment requires absolutely no challenge, no one respects it. It’s just viewed as a lack of self-discipline. People respect those who accomplish challenging feats, while they consider those who overindulge in easily obtained feats as weak, untrustworthy or flawed.

Second, women have potential to do more harm by sleeping around than men do. Say a man sleeps around with a bunch of different women. He’s definitely doing harm to these women if he pretends to be monogamous while sleeping around. He may cause them emotional pain by his promiscuity. He may cause unwanted pregnancy. He may spread VD. When women sleep around, however, they can cause not only all these same ill effects but one additional crucial ill effect: the risk of unknown parentage.

If one guy sleeps around with five women, each of whom is monogamous to him, and they all get pregnant, it’s a safe bet as to who the father is. If you reverse genders and have one woman who sleeps around with five men who are monogamous to her, and she gets pregnant, the father could be any of the five men. And if one of those men is tricked into raising a baby that isn’t his, he’s investing time, money, estate and property to provide for a child that isn’t carrying his DNA into the next generations, a costly mistake from an evolutionary standpoint.

Our two basic primal drives are to survive and to reproduce, and promiscuous women traditionally make it hard for a man to know for sure whether he is truly reproducing or is secretly raising another man’s child. Men stand a lot more to lose from promiscuous women than the other way around. And it’s no picnic for the child to not know who his real father is either. And it’s a mess for the women carrying on the deception as well. Or just look at any random episode of the Maury show if you don’t believe me.

Since the DNA test and the birth control pill didn’t exist until recently, there were no reliable ways to prevent pregnancy or prove parentage for most of human history. For this reason society developed a vested interest in preventing promiscuity among women, and society accomplished this by creating the promiscuous-girl stigma. And even though the creation of birth control and DNA tests have made this less of a risk than the past, long standing traditions and customs are not easy for society to break so the “tart” stigma remains.

Third, men have evolutionary reasons to be programmed to sleep around more. A lot of women roll their eyes when they hear that men are “hard-wired” to sleep around. But from an evolutionary standpoint, it makes total sense. If the two primal drives of humans are to survive and to reproduce, nothing leads to maximum reproduction like one man sleeping with multiple women. If one women sleeps with many men in a nine month period, she can only get pregnant just once. Nine months of rampant promiscuity would give the same result as nine months of highly sexed monogamy: one pregnancy. Now if one man sleeps with many women during a nine month period, you can get many pregnancies during that period. The more women he sleeps with, the more possible pregnancies. So from an evolutionary standpoint, there are concrete advantages to men being promiscuous compared to women being promiscuous. This doesn’t mean that women have evolved to be strictly monogamous. Women have evolved to be somewhat promiscuous too, something men badly underestimate. However they haven’t evolved to be as rampantly promiscuous as men.

Fourth, promiscuity poses more risk to women than to men. A woman has more to lose from choosing bad sex partners than a man does. She’s the one who gets stuck with going through a pregnancy and taking care of a baby alone if she chooses a deadbeat. For this reason, promiscuous women throughout history have historically been viewed as being a vastly more irresponsible risk takers than promiscuous men, who rightly or wrongly could always run away from the consequences of unwanted pregnancies easier than women could.

These four reasons explain why the longstanding tradition came about of men being rewarded for multiple partners while women get socially punished for similar promiscuity. Understand that I’m just explaining why the double standard came into existence and not condoning or condemning it. This is not an attempt to pass judgment or be self-righteous in any way. It’s just an explanation of why the two conditions are treated differently.

Feminism killed any respect the decent guy had for women. The contradictions are incredible.
The Internet is full of sluts. Funny, on most nights it’s hard to tell the difference between a street walker and a party goer.
Different women push the boundaries and raise the bar of disgrace year by year.
Fierce feminists defending women on these issues always bring up “well if man can do it….”

I don’t want a sluttier version of myself – I want a women that has self respect and isn’t caught up in the “fad of the day” . She doesn’t have to be a slut to prove anything.

Who wants to have children with these cess pools anyway, you ferrule feminists that probably need a good root can go plug in your vibrators. The modern woman wants a dick of their own – maybe science can go them one. In the meantime, owing a women a living for her pussy commodity my whole life is something I don’t have to do anymore. As for the psychol leso on this site DumilY? Take your fierce Insense burning sisterhood saving rhetoric and shove it. Type in porn on the net and see what the sisterhood is up too. Then go an get a root.

@HarryBerg: “Owing a woman a living for her pussy commodity.” Pussy commodity. Hmm. Interesting. Is that through a brokerage firm? What, like an exchange-traded fund, something like that?

I’m so embarrassed now–I mean, here I am, a woman with that actual commodity in my possession and I don’t even known the Producer Price Index for pussy! Talk about not knowing your own body! So bad. I guess I’ll just bring my broker to my next gynecologist appointment. Awkward, but whacha gonna do?

Level with me, HarryBerg–and you can be honest with me, because I think you really GET modern women–do you think that maybe I don’t know the PPI for my pussy because as a modern woman I want a dick of my own? Like, it was some kind of unconcious thing I was doing, because even though I had a taco I was secretly craving a hot dog? Because I really think you might have been on to something with that. You have an insight that just cannot be ignored. From the moment that you said us “ferrule feminists…probably need a good root” and so sagely advised us to to plug in our vibrators…well! I don’t think I need to tell you, Harry, that I felt like you were just a little Jiminy Cricket right there on my shoulder, watching my every move! And thank you for the phrase “a good root.” I knew not the void it would fill (Ha! No pun intended! Get it, Harry? I’m talking about filling my commodity with a good root, there–but not in a slutty way!). Prior to that, we “ferrule feminists” were all in need of a “firm rogering.” Now we have the variety of needing “a good root.” Variety IS the spice of life, after all, isn’t it, Harry?